"Only Love Can Break A Heart" / Gene Pitney
"Only Love Can Break Your Heart" / Neil Young
Listed among all the American musicians who inspired the young Beatles -- Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers -- it always surprises me to hear Gene Pitney's name. Somewhere in the aural slagheap of songs I heard on the family radio before I gained musical consciousness (i.e., before the Beatles' first U.S. tour), I remember those torchy Gene Pitney ballads, but they seemed quintessentially 1950s music to me. I lump all those guys together: Frankie Laine, Roy Orbison, Dion, Ricky Nelson, and all the Bobbies (Vee, Vinton, Darrin, Rydell, etc). That's not to say I don't like them . . . but hey, I like Dean Martin and Vic Damone too. I always thought rock 'n' roll was something different.
On the radio the other day, however, this Gene Pitney song came on, and -- you know what? It is a GREAT song. What makes it great is that flat-out yearning in Pitney's voice, the emotional catch in the throat, all its little wobbles and swoops, the way his vocal cracks on the occasional line. ("You know I'm sorry / I'll prove it / With just one kiss..."). I can see how this intensity inspired the Beatles, not to mention how John Lennon stole that crafty cracking-voice trick.
Of course the arrangement is horribly dated, with its melodramatic string section, echo chamber backup choir, those two interludes of cornball whistling. All this schmaltz for a teenage love song? But teenagers were his core audience, and having a blow-out fight with your girlfriend can be a Huge Event for a teenager -- and Pitney gave it the passion it deserves. Let's also remember that he wasn't speaking for his male listeners so much as casting himself as the sort of tender lover his female fans wanted. I can imagine plenty of tear-stained pillows were clutched to angora-sweatered bosoms while this 45 spun on the turntable.
Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote this tune (those guys pop up EVERYWHERE), which may account for its sophisticated angle. We launch abruptly into the middle of the story -- it starts out "Last night I hurt you / But darling / Remember this" -- and we never actually find out what he did (I have to admit, I'm curious). But that's beside the point, at least from his perspective. Now he's backpedaling like crazy, offering a convoluted argument to win her back: if you're so heartbroken, you must love me a lot -- therefore you must love me enough to take me back. It's flawed logic, but there's a good chance that her hormones are raging so hard, she'll fall for it. Pitney goes at it with full-bore regret, though I suppose in a modern cover the singer could be a sleazeball seducer. "Please let me hold you / And love you / For always, and always" -- that's one horny line, even the way Pitney sings it. He wants back in, and he'll do anything to get there.
Eight years later, Neil Young recorded a winsome acoustic waltz with practically the same title, "Only Love Can Break Your Heart," but it's about as different as a song can be. By 1970 "love" had a new meaning, a post-Summer of Love hippie meaning. In classic wistful folk-rock mode, Neil muses on the value of making honest emotional connections, even if it means risking heartbreak. Addressing the whole world, not just one specific lover, he's armed with just a acoustic guitar and that earnest, slightly strangled vocal, with a few friends harmonizing in the background. No echo chambers. No strings. It's a grander statement about life, but delivered with affecting simplicity.
"But only love can break your heart / Try to be sure right from the start / Yes, only love can break your heart / What if your world should fall apart . . . " The mellow, slightly stoned tempo floats you along, thinking lovely abstract thoughts about how love is all you need. The heartbreak reality gets lost in the shaky shuffle.
I love this Neil Young track -- and yet whenever I read that title, it's Gene Pitney's voice that flashes first into my mind; that's how deeply that Pitney track lies embedded in my subconscious. Lovely abstract thoughts just don't pack the wallop of a real guy and a real girl going through teenage angst. I guess I've sold Gene Pitney short all these years.
Well, for the record, I think she should take him back, no matter what he did. After all, he's really sorry. Just listen to that shiver in his voice...
Give Pitney a listen: http://www.amazon.com/Many-Sides-Pitney-Break-Heart/dp/B000000PTS or check out Neil: http://www.amazon.com/After-Gold-Rush-Neil-Young/dp/B000002KD9/sr=1-13/qid=1172724009/ref=sr_1_13/002-8741997-4930451?ie=UTF8&s=music
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
"Fall On Me" / R.E.M.
Mea culpa: I missed posting yesterday because I was juiced all day about going to the Tibet House benefit concert at Carnegie Hall. What a brilliant line-up: Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Philip Glass, Sigur Ros, Debbie Harry, Ray Davies, Michael Stipe, and Patti Smith (not to mention a glorious contingent of orange-robed Tibetan Buddhist monks). I adored Ray's a cappella version of the Kinks song "Days", and Lou Reed's extended version of his "Ecstasy" was electric. But one of the highlights of the evening was hearing Patti Smith duet with Michael Stipe on the R.E.M. hit "Everybody Hurts." Sitting in my seat, wrapped in the song, I felt seized with nostalgia, wondering why Michael Stipe had fallen so far out of my musical world.
Well, there are many answers. R.E.M. got so much airplay in the early 1990s that I gradually lost interest in them, especially as Michael Stipe became too ubiquitous a figure on the do-gooder circuit (I call this the Sting Effect). There's always a fine line, too, between a band that has a distinct recognizeable sound and a band whose songs all sound alike, and R.E.M. often teetered perilously on that line. It's an engaging blend -- folkie wistfulness married to a bashing garage-band beat -- but they could've borrowed more of a sense of humor from the punk movement; R.E.M. had a fatal tendency to build every song up to grandiose anthem level (I call this the Springsteen Effect).
And yet, during the long musical dry spell of the late 1980s and early 1990s -- years when I retreated into my old albums because very little contemporary music interested me -- R.E.M. was one of the few new bands that seemed to matter. I fell for the swelling majesty of those songs, their pensive minor-key poetry, those riddling lyrics -- and, of course, the slightly nasal earnest passion of Michael Stipe's vocals. Just think of the haunting loneliness throbbing through "The One I Love," or the punch-drunk alienation of "Losing My Religion," or the dazed jerky reflexes of "Stand." Yeah, maybe it was rock music for depressives (until Nirvana came along and made R.E.M. sound upbeat in contrast), but all that emotional sincerity was refreshing after the nihilism of punk.
This track from Life's Rich Pageant (1986) never got overplayed on the radio; in fact it never got near the attention it deserved. On this album, Stipe finally began pronouncing his words clearly, which made me realize at last that these lyrics were supposed to be baffling. "There’s a problem," he starts out, intriguingly, sucking me into the string of images that follow, in a hypnotic circling melody: "Feathers iron / Bargain buildings, weights and pulleys / Feathers hit the ground before the weight can leave the air." Hunh? I'm not sure why I picture Galileo here, dropping the feather and the weight off the Tower of Pisa, but apparently I'm meant to because the next verse mentions "progress" and "conscience" and "building towered foresight."
But I also think of Chicken Little on the refrain, "Buy the sky and sell the sky / And tell the sky and tell the sky / Don’t fall on me" (notice how each substituted verb signals a moody key shift). By the time Stipe's voice soars into "Don't fall on me," it's almost a relief. It took me ages to sort out what the background vocals were chanting, their own Chicken-Little-ish squawks of "(What is it up in the air for) (It’s gonna fall)" and "(It’s over it’s over me) (It’s gonna fall)."
Apocalyptic tremors run throughout this song, no question about it, with the echoing vocals and jangly guitar and sledgehammer drumbeat, but those elliptical lyrics leave me groping in the dark -- without an action plan, without a road map, without any sort of fallout shelter. Hmmm. Just like life.
The one factor that balances the equation is Michael Stipe's singing, a beacon of human passion shining through the tangled melody, the dense arrangement, the cryptic lyrics. There are moments in this song (and in most R.E.M. songs) where his clear boyish tenor scales a melodic line and simply seems to burst into fireworks. He lays it all on the line, vocally speaking. I call this the Van Morrison Effect -- and it gets me every time.
Last night at Tibet House I saw Michael Stipe tear into "Everybody Hurts" with that same gut-wrenching passion, and I realize I missed it. I went home and dug out my old R.E.M albums, and it was like a high school reunion. I may not want to spend the rest of my life listening to R.E.M., but every once in a while it's great to get that old feeling back again.
Sample: http://www.mp3.com/r.e.m./artists/95663/songs.html?tag=tabs;songs&om_act=convert&om_clk=arttabs
Mea culpa: I missed posting yesterday because I was juiced all day about going to the Tibet House benefit concert at Carnegie Hall. What a brilliant line-up: Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Philip Glass, Sigur Ros, Debbie Harry, Ray Davies, Michael Stipe, and Patti Smith (not to mention a glorious contingent of orange-robed Tibetan Buddhist monks). I adored Ray's a cappella version of the Kinks song "Days", and Lou Reed's extended version of his "Ecstasy" was electric. But one of the highlights of the evening was hearing Patti Smith duet with Michael Stipe on the R.E.M. hit "Everybody Hurts." Sitting in my seat, wrapped in the song, I felt seized with nostalgia, wondering why Michael Stipe had fallen so far out of my musical world.
Well, there are many answers. R.E.M. got so much airplay in the early 1990s that I gradually lost interest in them, especially as Michael Stipe became too ubiquitous a figure on the do-gooder circuit (I call this the Sting Effect). There's always a fine line, too, between a band that has a distinct recognizeable sound and a band whose songs all sound alike, and R.E.M. often teetered perilously on that line. It's an engaging blend -- folkie wistfulness married to a bashing garage-band beat -- but they could've borrowed more of a sense of humor from the punk movement; R.E.M. had a fatal tendency to build every song up to grandiose anthem level (I call this the Springsteen Effect).
And yet, during the long musical dry spell of the late 1980s and early 1990s -- years when I retreated into my old albums because very little contemporary music interested me -- R.E.M. was one of the few new bands that seemed to matter. I fell for the swelling majesty of those songs, their pensive minor-key poetry, those riddling lyrics -- and, of course, the slightly nasal earnest passion of Michael Stipe's vocals. Just think of the haunting loneliness throbbing through "The One I Love," or the punch-drunk alienation of "Losing My Religion," or the dazed jerky reflexes of "Stand." Yeah, maybe it was rock music for depressives (until Nirvana came along and made R.E.M. sound upbeat in contrast), but all that emotional sincerity was refreshing after the nihilism of punk.
This track from Life's Rich Pageant (1986) never got overplayed on the radio; in fact it never got near the attention it deserved. On this album, Stipe finally began pronouncing his words clearly, which made me realize at last that these lyrics were supposed to be baffling. "There’s a problem," he starts out, intriguingly, sucking me into the string of images that follow, in a hypnotic circling melody: "Feathers iron / Bargain buildings, weights and pulleys / Feathers hit the ground before the weight can leave the air." Hunh? I'm not sure why I picture Galileo here, dropping the feather and the weight off the Tower of Pisa, but apparently I'm meant to because the next verse mentions "progress" and "conscience" and "building towered foresight."
But I also think of Chicken Little on the refrain, "Buy the sky and sell the sky / And tell the sky and tell the sky / Don’t fall on me" (notice how each substituted verb signals a moody key shift). By the time Stipe's voice soars into "Don't fall on me," it's almost a relief. It took me ages to sort out what the background vocals were chanting, their own Chicken-Little-ish squawks of "(What is it up in the air for) (It’s gonna fall)" and "(It’s over it’s over me) (It’s gonna fall)."
Apocalyptic tremors run throughout this song, no question about it, with the echoing vocals and jangly guitar and sledgehammer drumbeat, but those elliptical lyrics leave me groping in the dark -- without an action plan, without a road map, without any sort of fallout shelter. Hmmm. Just like life.
The one factor that balances the equation is Michael Stipe's singing, a beacon of human passion shining through the tangled melody, the dense arrangement, the cryptic lyrics. There are moments in this song (and in most R.E.M. songs) where his clear boyish tenor scales a melodic line and simply seems to burst into fireworks. He lays it all on the line, vocally speaking. I call this the Van Morrison Effect -- and it gets me every time.
Last night at Tibet House I saw Michael Stipe tear into "Everybody Hurts" with that same gut-wrenching passion, and I realize I missed it. I went home and dug out my old R.E.M albums, and it was like a high school reunion. I may not want to spend the rest of my life listening to R.E.M., but every once in a while it's great to get that old feeling back again.
Sample: http://www.mp3.com/r.e.m./artists/95663/songs.html?tag=tabs;songs&om_act=convert&om_clk=arttabs
Friday, February 23, 2007
"David Watts" / The Jam
I read that the Jam are reuniting for a tour and album, which got me very excited until I read in the next paragraph that it would be most of the Jam -- everyone except Paul Weller. Now, that leaves just Rick Buckler and Bruce Foxton . . . and Weller's the one who wrote most of their songs and did the lead vocals. Pardon me, Rick and Bruce, but no matter how talented your newly-recuited bandmates may be, I just don't see how you can call this The Jam.
There is at least one Jam song Paul Weller didn't write -- it's called "David Watts" and it was written by Ray Davies for the 1967 album Something Else By The Kinks. Thanks in large part to this cover by the Jam (1978 -- it's on their superb album All Mod Cons), Ray Davies began to be called "the godfather of BritPop," which I find nearly as funny as calling Nick Lowe the "godfather of punk". But that's a whole other discussion.
The main thing is, Paul Weller was influenced by the Kinks (so who wasn't?) and had the good grace to pay public tribute to them by recording this track. Most of the Kinks fans I know agree that this is a great Kinks cover, possibly even better than the Kinks' original recording. The Jam didn't just reproduce the song as the Kinks sang it, they added flavor of their own, giving it a smart slap of punk aggression. They take it just a tick faster, introduce some dissonance to the harmonies here and there, lay down a thrumming guitar line, and punch out the last line of the verse with a loud shouted "Oy!" (the Kinks merely shouted "hey!"). I love that "Oy!" The class division that was implicit in the original comes out so much stronger with the Jam's yob accents.
This song is the ultimate expression of adolescent male envy. The singer -- who describes himself right up front, "I am a dull and simple lad," almost painfully insecure -- recites a litany of all the advantages his schoolmate David Watts possesses: He's met the Queen, has tasted champagne, leads the school team to victory, passes all his exams, is the head boy at the school -- and of course, all the girls compete for him, which is probably the cruelest and most inevitable advantage of all.
The singer watches wistfully from afar, and isn't there a flicker of homoerotic attraction mingled with the envy ("And when I lie on my pillow at night / I dream I could fight like David Watts")? He doesn't hate David Watts, mind you -- it's just that (as he tells us over and over, at the end of every verse) "I wish I could be like David Watts." He says David Watt's name eight times in the course of this song, almost obsessively, like a mantra, and winds up saying admiringly, "For he is a pure and noble breed," the kind of phrase you'd use to describe some Shakespearean prince.
The tune I could easily imagine as a prep school anthem, with those madrigal-like "fa-fa-fa fa fa fa-fa-fa's" at the beginning of every verse. (Although I suspect it's also a sneaky allusion to Roger Daltrey's stuttered line, "Why don't you just f-f-f-f-fade away?" in "My Generation" -- the f's seem so ready to morph into words that are a little less polite).
This song doesn't go anywhere, doesn't reach any conclusion. It's just an expression of the dull agony of being an ordinary kid, continually taking a back seat to the golden boy. But as we have all learned in life, those golden boys tend to peak early -- while the teenage misfits like Ray Davies and Paul Weller end up scoring the real successes in life.
Anyway, that's who I'm pulling for.
Check out a sample: http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,108340,00.html
I read that the Jam are reuniting for a tour and album, which got me very excited until I read in the next paragraph that it would be most of the Jam -- everyone except Paul Weller. Now, that leaves just Rick Buckler and Bruce Foxton . . . and Weller's the one who wrote most of their songs and did the lead vocals. Pardon me, Rick and Bruce, but no matter how talented your newly-recuited bandmates may be, I just don't see how you can call this The Jam.
There is at least one Jam song Paul Weller didn't write -- it's called "David Watts" and it was written by Ray Davies for the 1967 album Something Else By The Kinks. Thanks in large part to this cover by the Jam (1978 -- it's on their superb album All Mod Cons), Ray Davies began to be called "the godfather of BritPop," which I find nearly as funny as calling Nick Lowe the "godfather of punk". But that's a whole other discussion.
The main thing is, Paul Weller was influenced by the Kinks (so who wasn't?) and had the good grace to pay public tribute to them by recording this track. Most of the Kinks fans I know agree that this is a great Kinks cover, possibly even better than the Kinks' original recording. The Jam didn't just reproduce the song as the Kinks sang it, they added flavor of their own, giving it a smart slap of punk aggression. They take it just a tick faster, introduce some dissonance to the harmonies here and there, lay down a thrumming guitar line, and punch out the last line of the verse with a loud shouted "Oy!" (the Kinks merely shouted "hey!"). I love that "Oy!" The class division that was implicit in the original comes out so much stronger with the Jam's yob accents.
This song is the ultimate expression of adolescent male envy. The singer -- who describes himself right up front, "I am a dull and simple lad," almost painfully insecure -- recites a litany of all the advantages his schoolmate David Watts possesses: He's met the Queen, has tasted champagne, leads the school team to victory, passes all his exams, is the head boy at the school -- and of course, all the girls compete for him, which is probably the cruelest and most inevitable advantage of all.
The singer watches wistfully from afar, and isn't there a flicker of homoerotic attraction mingled with the envy ("And when I lie on my pillow at night / I dream I could fight like David Watts")? He doesn't hate David Watts, mind you -- it's just that (as he tells us over and over, at the end of every verse) "I wish I could be like David Watts." He says David Watt's name eight times in the course of this song, almost obsessively, like a mantra, and winds up saying admiringly, "For he is a pure and noble breed," the kind of phrase you'd use to describe some Shakespearean prince.
The tune I could easily imagine as a prep school anthem, with those madrigal-like "fa-fa-fa fa fa fa-fa-fa's" at the beginning of every verse. (Although I suspect it's also a sneaky allusion to Roger Daltrey's stuttered line, "Why don't you just f-f-f-f-fade away?" in "My Generation" -- the f's seem so ready to morph into words that are a little less polite).
This song doesn't go anywhere, doesn't reach any conclusion. It's just an expression of the dull agony of being an ordinary kid, continually taking a back seat to the golden boy. But as we have all learned in life, those golden boys tend to peak early -- while the teenage misfits like Ray Davies and Paul Weller end up scoring the real successes in life.
Anyway, that's who I'm pulling for.
Check out a sample: http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,108340,00.html
Thursday, February 22, 2007
"California Dreamin'" / The Mamas and the Papas
If you want proof of how much music changed during the 1960s, just listen to yesterday's Patsy Cline song and then this one. "Crazy" sounded perfectly at home on the radio in 1961, but by 1965 -- just four years later -- the airwaves were full of a new sound entirely. When the Mamas and the Papas burst onto the scene with this song (fittingly, released in November), it was a perfect counterculture anthem of defiance and alienation -- and unforgettably lush and catchy to boot.
The soft intro, picked on an acoustic guitar, stated the song's folkie intentions from the outset, but this was no folk song, not with that metallic rock 'n' roll drumbeat, the brittle echo-laden production, the jazz flute in the instrumental break. And while folk music had harmonies, they weren't harmonies like this, a dense wall of vocals you could almost climb into. Because the song had "California" in the title, I used to associate those harmonies with the Beach Boys' sound, but the Wilson brothers always sounded sunny, their mellow voices blending in Four-Freshman-inspired polyphony; there's nothing sunny about the minor-key dissonances of "California Dreamin'." No, these harmonies owe more to the British Invasion, to the Zombies' "She's Not There" and the Yardbirds' "For Your Love" and the Beatles' "Things We Said Today." (And in turn, next year we'd get the Hollies' "Bus Stop" and the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby.") Denny Doherty's lines are constantly overlapped by Cass Elliott and Michelle Phillips' counterpoint, so there's scarcely a beat without vocals, their voices crunching together at the end of every verse in a haunting dissonant chord.
No, this song is about as un-California as it could be, but that's the point. The singer is roaming aimlessly in the middle of bleak winter -- "All the leaves are brown / And the sky is gray" (I can see that scene outside my window, which is probably why this song came into my head today) -- and he's pining for warm Los Angeles. But it's not just the weather that's got him so gloomy; there's a subtext of romantic complication, never spelled out but hinted at in the end: "If I didn't tell her / I could leave today." He's not telling us the story, he's just brooding -- and that note of mystery makes this even more compelling.
What really made this song a hit, though, was the controversial second verse: "Stopped into a church / I passed along the way / Well, I got down on my knees / And I pretend to pray." Pretend to pray, and Denny delivers that line with an extra punch of desperation. But religion is no consolation; quite the opposite. "You know that preacher likes the cold / He knows I'm gonna stay" -- the church seems like part of the forces ganging up to suppress this California dreamer. (It was the anti-establishment 60s, after all.)
That tantalizing flute comes weaving in right after this verse, the inarticulate expression of all his yearning, and by the time the final verse begins again, it seems like the women are taunting poor Denny, the same way the girl back-ups often seemed to be shaking a warning finger in Motown songs; there's no getting away from those nagging echoes. He's truly trapped.
Of course, when I first fell under this song's hypnotic spell in 1965, I had no idea that the singer, Denny, was sleeping with back-up singer Michelle -- but then, neither did Michelle's husband John Phillips, who wrote the song and stood there playing guitar while Denny sang it. So who is it about? I suppose it shouldn't matter, but somehow I think all that complicated emotion is what gives this song its extra power. That and the magnificent voice of Cass Elliott, who starts out trying to blend her voice in those close harmonies with Michelle's frail soprano, but can't help overpowering her by the second verse. The story goes that Cass was in love with Denny too -- you could say she's singing her heart out here.
And in the end, the only thing that really matters to me about the Mamas and the Papas was Cass's voice. I remember seeing them for the first time on TV, with John wearing that stupid fur hat he favored, Michelle slim and blond and beautiful, Denny in an embroidered Mod tunic -- and hefty Cass, wearing an absolutely huge flowered caftan, swaying and singing away. I couldn't take my eyes off of her. It was so clear she was there because SHE COULD SING. I cannot tell you what a powerful message that sent me as a little girl.
And on this bleak winter's day, the sound of Cass Elliott's voice is still better than any dream of California.
Have a listen at http://www.mp3.com/albums/10021/summary.html
If you want proof of how much music changed during the 1960s, just listen to yesterday's Patsy Cline song and then this one. "Crazy" sounded perfectly at home on the radio in 1961, but by 1965 -- just four years later -- the airwaves were full of a new sound entirely. When the Mamas and the Papas burst onto the scene with this song (fittingly, released in November), it was a perfect counterculture anthem of defiance and alienation -- and unforgettably lush and catchy to boot.
The soft intro, picked on an acoustic guitar, stated the song's folkie intentions from the outset, but this was no folk song, not with that metallic rock 'n' roll drumbeat, the brittle echo-laden production, the jazz flute in the instrumental break. And while folk music had harmonies, they weren't harmonies like this, a dense wall of vocals you could almost climb into. Because the song had "California" in the title, I used to associate those harmonies with the Beach Boys' sound, but the Wilson brothers always sounded sunny, their mellow voices blending in Four-Freshman-inspired polyphony; there's nothing sunny about the minor-key dissonances of "California Dreamin'." No, these harmonies owe more to the British Invasion, to the Zombies' "She's Not There" and the Yardbirds' "For Your Love" and the Beatles' "Things We Said Today." (And in turn, next year we'd get the Hollies' "Bus Stop" and the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby.") Denny Doherty's lines are constantly overlapped by Cass Elliott and Michelle Phillips' counterpoint, so there's scarcely a beat without vocals, their voices crunching together at the end of every verse in a haunting dissonant chord.
No, this song is about as un-California as it could be, but that's the point. The singer is roaming aimlessly in the middle of bleak winter -- "All the leaves are brown / And the sky is gray" (I can see that scene outside my window, which is probably why this song came into my head today) -- and he's pining for warm Los Angeles. But it's not just the weather that's got him so gloomy; there's a subtext of romantic complication, never spelled out but hinted at in the end: "If I didn't tell her / I could leave today." He's not telling us the story, he's just brooding -- and that note of mystery makes this even more compelling.
What really made this song a hit, though, was the controversial second verse: "Stopped into a church / I passed along the way / Well, I got down on my knees / And I pretend to pray." Pretend to pray, and Denny delivers that line with an extra punch of desperation. But religion is no consolation; quite the opposite. "You know that preacher likes the cold / He knows I'm gonna stay" -- the church seems like part of the forces ganging up to suppress this California dreamer. (It was the anti-establishment 60s, after all.)
That tantalizing flute comes weaving in right after this verse, the inarticulate expression of all his yearning, and by the time the final verse begins again, it seems like the women are taunting poor Denny, the same way the girl back-ups often seemed to be shaking a warning finger in Motown songs; there's no getting away from those nagging echoes. He's truly trapped.
Of course, when I first fell under this song's hypnotic spell in 1965, I had no idea that the singer, Denny, was sleeping with back-up singer Michelle -- but then, neither did Michelle's husband John Phillips, who wrote the song and stood there playing guitar while Denny sang it. So who is it about? I suppose it shouldn't matter, but somehow I think all that complicated emotion is what gives this song its extra power. That and the magnificent voice of Cass Elliott, who starts out trying to blend her voice in those close harmonies with Michelle's frail soprano, but can't help overpowering her by the second verse. The story goes that Cass was in love with Denny too -- you could say she's singing her heart out here.
And in the end, the only thing that really matters to me about the Mamas and the Papas was Cass's voice. I remember seeing them for the first time on TV, with John wearing that stupid fur hat he favored, Michelle slim and blond and beautiful, Denny in an embroidered Mod tunic -- and hefty Cass, wearing an absolutely huge flowered caftan, swaying and singing away. I couldn't take my eyes off of her. It was so clear she was there because SHE COULD SING. I cannot tell you what a powerful message that sent me as a little girl.
And on this bleak winter's day, the sound of Cass Elliott's voice is still better than any dream of California.
Have a listen at http://www.mp3.com/albums/10021/summary.html
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
"Crazy" / Patsy Cline
Confession time: I didn’t even know who Patsy Cline was until I saw the movie Sweet Dreams, that excellent biopic starring Jessica Lange. I know, buying her records after that was kinda like buying a Dalmatian puppy after seeing 101 Dalmatians. But in the long run, it doesn’t matter how you find the music, so long as you love it when you do.
I will add, in my defense, that Patsy Cline’s songs had entered my consciousness by osmosis way back when I was a little kid. There were a bunch of similar powerhouse female singers in the early 60s -- Teresa Brewer, Brenda Lee, the divine Skeeter Davis (her “End of the World” was one of my favorite tracks even before Herman’s Hermits covered it) – and I knew their songs even if I couldn’t tell you who sang which one.
Sitting through Sweet Dreams, I kept saying, to myself, “Wow, she sang that one too?” When you stop to think that Patsy only had six years to make her mark – she put out only three albums before that plane crash took her in 1963 – the quality of the output is incredible. It's no wonder that Patsy Cline gravitated into mainstream pop; country music alone wasn't big enough to hold her talent.
The compilation 12 Greatest Hits By Patsy Cline has been in constant rotation on my music player ever since. The confidence of her voice simply astounds me – the way she could fiddle with the beat, top a high note with perfect pitch, zoom in and out on volume (often on a single word), curl her voice around a phrase just so. Phrasing? Patsy had a instinct for phrasing nearly as good as Sinatra’s. Putting a song across? She was a born storyteller – an essential for any country music performer – who knew exactly when to quaver with emotion and when to bite off a lyric sarcastically. But here's the thing that, to me, really set Patsy Cline apart: Despite those incredible pipes, she never came across as a diva. Maybe that was a conscious decision, maybe it was just the kind of down-to-earth Kentucky gal she really was. Her delivery is so natural, relaxed, and unaffected, I find myself believing every word she sings.
We all know the song “Crazy”, of course – funnily enough, written by Willie Nelson, his first songwriting hit. Flavored more by jazz and pop than by country (that cocktail lounge piano twiddling around), it was a big crossover number for her in 1961. Willie didn’t write this song for Patsy, but it sure ended up in the right hands: who else could have done that swooping thing on the word “crazy”? And who else would have been smart enough to keep this song so light-hearted? Because if you listen to the lyrics, it’s a martyr’s song – she’s feeling blue, he’s left her for somebody new, she’s wondering what she did to lose him, she’s embarrassed that she ever thought she could keep him. “I’m crazy for trying / And crazy for crying / And I’m crazy for loving you.” A lesser singer would whine and moan; Patsy just sounds rueful and bemused, with a warm little chuckle in her voice. Even she knows he’s not worth it. And yet -- she can’t help it. That’s just how love is. I dunno why, I find this profound.
This is the same gal who goes out “Walkin’After Midnight,” obsessively visiting the spots where she used to hang with her ex-boyfriend; who finds it “Strange” that she’s still dreaming of the man who suddenly dumped her for another woman; who’s found a much better new boyfriend and still moons around wondering “Why Can’t He Be You?” Patsy Cline is the high priestess of hard-luck girls wearing their hearts on their sleeves, a girlfriend all of us can relate to when men let us down (as they inevitably do). But her genius is to keep the rhythms upbeat, her voice confidential and light, just an occasional note betraying a yodel of anguish.
Unlike Skeeter Davis, Patsy doesn’t think the world’s going to end because her feller left her. She’s bruised but brave, and she knows perfectly well that nothing she does will bring that louse back. Still, might as well sing about it . . . at least 'til the next heartache comes along.
Confession time: I didn’t even know who Patsy Cline was until I saw the movie Sweet Dreams, that excellent biopic starring Jessica Lange. I know, buying her records after that was kinda like buying a Dalmatian puppy after seeing 101 Dalmatians. But in the long run, it doesn’t matter how you find the music, so long as you love it when you do.
I will add, in my defense, that Patsy Cline’s songs had entered my consciousness by osmosis way back when I was a little kid. There were a bunch of similar powerhouse female singers in the early 60s -- Teresa Brewer, Brenda Lee, the divine Skeeter Davis (her “End of the World” was one of my favorite tracks even before Herman’s Hermits covered it) – and I knew their songs even if I couldn’t tell you who sang which one.
Sitting through Sweet Dreams, I kept saying, to myself, “Wow, she sang that one too?” When you stop to think that Patsy only had six years to make her mark – she put out only three albums before that plane crash took her in 1963 – the quality of the output is incredible. It's no wonder that Patsy Cline gravitated into mainstream pop; country music alone wasn't big enough to hold her talent.
The compilation 12 Greatest Hits By Patsy Cline has been in constant rotation on my music player ever since. The confidence of her voice simply astounds me – the way she could fiddle with the beat, top a high note with perfect pitch, zoom in and out on volume (often on a single word), curl her voice around a phrase just so. Phrasing? Patsy had a instinct for phrasing nearly as good as Sinatra’s. Putting a song across? She was a born storyteller – an essential for any country music performer – who knew exactly when to quaver with emotion and when to bite off a lyric sarcastically. But here's the thing that, to me, really set Patsy Cline apart: Despite those incredible pipes, she never came across as a diva. Maybe that was a conscious decision, maybe it was just the kind of down-to-earth Kentucky gal she really was. Her delivery is so natural, relaxed, and unaffected, I find myself believing every word she sings.
We all know the song “Crazy”, of course – funnily enough, written by Willie Nelson, his first songwriting hit. Flavored more by jazz and pop than by country (that cocktail lounge piano twiddling around), it was a big crossover number for her in 1961. Willie didn’t write this song for Patsy, but it sure ended up in the right hands: who else could have done that swooping thing on the word “crazy”? And who else would have been smart enough to keep this song so light-hearted? Because if you listen to the lyrics, it’s a martyr’s song – she’s feeling blue, he’s left her for somebody new, she’s wondering what she did to lose him, she’s embarrassed that she ever thought she could keep him. “I’m crazy for trying / And crazy for crying / And I’m crazy for loving you.” A lesser singer would whine and moan; Patsy just sounds rueful and bemused, with a warm little chuckle in her voice. Even she knows he’s not worth it. And yet -- she can’t help it. That’s just how love is. I dunno why, I find this profound.
This is the same gal who goes out “Walkin’After Midnight,” obsessively visiting the spots where she used to hang with her ex-boyfriend; who finds it “Strange” that she’s still dreaming of the man who suddenly dumped her for another woman; who’s found a much better new boyfriend and still moons around wondering “Why Can’t He Be You?” Patsy Cline is the high priestess of hard-luck girls wearing their hearts on their sleeves, a girlfriend all of us can relate to when men let us down (as they inevitably do). But her genius is to keep the rhythms upbeat, her voice confidential and light, just an occasional note betraying a yodel of anguish.
Unlike Skeeter Davis, Patsy doesn’t think the world’s going to end because her feller left her. She’s bruised but brave, and she knows perfectly well that nothing she does will bring that louse back. Still, might as well sing about it . . . at least 'til the next heartache comes along.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
"Hey, Pocky A-Way" / The Meters
Happy Mardi Gras!! Even if you can't be down in New Orleans for the fesitvities, you can always bring the festivities right into your own home -- all it takes is a few funk-laden tracks from the Meters, and you're ready to strut your stuff.
Here's the recipe: Throw together a couple chunky guitars, a cupful of honky-tonk piano, a dash of horns just to spice things up, and stir it all up with some soulfully sung refrains. Pour it into a syncopation-crazy percussion section that uses everything from congas to hand claps (courtesy of the divinely-named drummer Zigaboo Modeliste), and there you are -- you've cooked up the sort of music that absolutely requires you to get up out of your chair and do a little parading.
Nobody has better New Orleans credentials than the Meters. Art Neville (of the Neville Brothers) was their frontman when they first formed in 1965, forging a new musical sound from jazz and R&B and Afro-Caribbean rhythms that would eventually become known as funk. Not only that, they were the house band for the masterful producer Allen Toussaint for years. I love Allen Toussaint too -- there's nobody on this planet more souful and elegant -- but today I felt like dancing. On days when I feel like dancing, the Meters will always win out.
I can teach you the lyrics in ten seconds -- "Hey Pocky A-Way" is most of it, sung in a call-and-response that dances from speaker to speaker. There is a verse, if you want to get literary: "Little bitty boy, with a heart of steel / You know you can't boogie now / But your sister sure will / Feel good music in your soul / Makes your body wanna rock, wanna rock 'n' roll." The other verse has us listening to the good music in a car, but the basic idea's the same. Hardly profound.
But hey, it's Mardi Gras. We have all of Lent ahead of us to be profound in. Today, put on the Meters and have a party.
Here's 30 seconds of it, just to make you hungry for more: http://www.smokecds.com/track/134164
Happy Mardi Gras!! Even if you can't be down in New Orleans for the fesitvities, you can always bring the festivities right into your own home -- all it takes is a few funk-laden tracks from the Meters, and you're ready to strut your stuff.
Here's the recipe: Throw together a couple chunky guitars, a cupful of honky-tonk piano, a dash of horns just to spice things up, and stir it all up with some soulfully sung refrains. Pour it into a syncopation-crazy percussion section that uses everything from congas to hand claps (courtesy of the divinely-named drummer Zigaboo Modeliste), and there you are -- you've cooked up the sort of music that absolutely requires you to get up out of your chair and do a little parading.
Nobody has better New Orleans credentials than the Meters. Art Neville (of the Neville Brothers) was their frontman when they first formed in 1965, forging a new musical sound from jazz and R&B and Afro-Caribbean rhythms that would eventually become known as funk. Not only that, they were the house band for the masterful producer Allen Toussaint for years. I love Allen Toussaint too -- there's nobody on this planet more souful and elegant -- but today I felt like dancing. On days when I feel like dancing, the Meters will always win out.
I can teach you the lyrics in ten seconds -- "Hey Pocky A-Way" is most of it, sung in a call-and-response that dances from speaker to speaker. There is a verse, if you want to get literary: "Little bitty boy, with a heart of steel / You know you can't boogie now / But your sister sure will / Feel good music in your soul / Makes your body wanna rock, wanna rock 'n' roll." The other verse has us listening to the good music in a car, but the basic idea's the same. Hardly profound.
But hey, it's Mardi Gras. We have all of Lent ahead of us to be profound in. Today, put on the Meters and have a party.
Here's 30 seconds of it, just to make you hungry for more: http://www.smokecds.com/track/134164
Sunday, February 18, 2007
“Knowing Me, Knowing You” / ABBA
I suppose this fits in the category of Guilty Pleasures – except I refuse to apologize for loving ABBA. I am, however, willing to admit that my ABBA fondness owes a lot to the Time and Place Factor, right along with Carole King’s Tapestry and James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James. I was living in Europe, where ABBA was always bigger than in the States, and over the 1976 Christmas holidays, every third song played at every party and disco we went to was “Dancing Queen.” You know that keyboard glissando at the beginning? Everytime the crowd heard it, they let loose a matching hoot of delight. “Dancing Queen” is a fantastic dance hit, at least for the dances people danced in 1976 -- not too fast, full of whoo-oohs and shick-a-shick drums and string section twirls that let you peel off a disco flourish or two.
If pressed, though, I'm willing to concede that “Dancing Queen” is no masterpiece – it’s too much a rip-off of “I Saw Her Standing There.” But “Knowing Me Knowing You”? There’s a song with substance. Really. Bear with me.
Once on a flight to Europe, I saw a documentary about ABBA and I was positively riveted by its account of the tangled love lives of the band's four members, Benny, Bjorn, Frida, and Agnetha. I can’t keep straight who’s who, so don’t ask me which two were married and which ones had the affair, but you get the picture. It struck me as tragic, much more so than the similar affairs that busted up Fleetwood Mac and The Mamas and the Papas in their day. “The Winner Takes It All” is the most poignant song they ever recorded about this betrayal and break-up, but “Knowing Me Knowing You” comes close.
Yes, it’s a break-up song, despite its mid-tempo synthesized glitter. Hear that bitterness in the girls’ voices, especially when the men’s voices weave weakly in and out, ineffectually protesting. Those strident female vocals never worked better than in this song (well, this one and “Money, Money, Money”). Then there’s the tantalizing “a-ha’s” thrown in, not to mention the whispered echo of “memories…good days…bad days…”, like the devil on her other shoulder tempting her back into the relationship.
The lyrics casually drop details of this affair. Clearly it's been volatile – “this time we’re through” they keep saying, so you know they’ve broken up before. She’s “walking through an empty house / tears in my eyes,” so they’re been living together; “in these old familiar rooms / Children would play / Now there’s only emptiness / Nothing to say,” so there’s kids involved. I imagine a tough, independent woman (blond of course), pulling the plug on a marriage that’s put them both through the wringer -- hence the hardness of the music's electronic texture, the flat affect of the singing, the forced snappy rhythm. They're past fury, but not yet in acceptance mode; hear how the voices waver briefly on the line “Breaking up is never easy / I know / But I have to go,” with its plaintive echo of all those girl-group songs. It’s practically like a Bergman film in my opinion; those doubled vocals make me see Liv Ullman and Bibi Andersson in Persona.
Did you know that Frida and Agnetha’s vocals were recorded separately, at slightly different tempos? They were then adjusted for playback at the same tempo, which made one girl’s voice come out ever so slightly lower than the other. The result was a distinctive mix of dissonance and bottom, which invested those tracks with an anthemic grandeur. When I heard that (that airplane documentary again) it was like a bell going off – of course! It wasn’t just how great Frida and Agnetha’s voices were; this studio “sweetening” was a stroke of genius, especially given the disco-like shimmer of their wall of sound.
If this were a slow and mournful song, it wouldn’t work. It’s a hard and determined song. She is walking out, and calling on all the steel in her soul to do so. But she’s the level-headed one here, the one who knows her man and knows herself and knows there’s no hope. They’ve given it an honest shot, but it is TIME TO MOVE ON. Well, godspeed, sister. You go, girl.
Take a listen: http://www.amazon.com/gp/recsradio/radio/B00005CDNG/ref=pd_krex_dp_001_005/002-8741997-4930451?ie=UTF8&track=005&disc=001
I suppose this fits in the category of Guilty Pleasures – except I refuse to apologize for loving ABBA. I am, however, willing to admit that my ABBA fondness owes a lot to the Time and Place Factor, right along with Carole King’s Tapestry and James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James. I was living in Europe, where ABBA was always bigger than in the States, and over the 1976 Christmas holidays, every third song played at every party and disco we went to was “Dancing Queen.” You know that keyboard glissando at the beginning? Everytime the crowd heard it, they let loose a matching hoot of delight. “Dancing Queen” is a fantastic dance hit, at least for the dances people danced in 1976 -- not too fast, full of whoo-oohs and shick-a-shick drums and string section twirls that let you peel off a disco flourish or two.
If pressed, though, I'm willing to concede that “Dancing Queen” is no masterpiece – it’s too much a rip-off of “I Saw Her Standing There.” But “Knowing Me Knowing You”? There’s a song with substance. Really. Bear with me.
Once on a flight to Europe, I saw a documentary about ABBA and I was positively riveted by its account of the tangled love lives of the band's four members, Benny, Bjorn, Frida, and Agnetha. I can’t keep straight who’s who, so don’t ask me which two were married and which ones had the affair, but you get the picture. It struck me as tragic, much more so than the similar affairs that busted up Fleetwood Mac and The Mamas and the Papas in their day. “The Winner Takes It All” is the most poignant song they ever recorded about this betrayal and break-up, but “Knowing Me Knowing You” comes close.
Yes, it’s a break-up song, despite its mid-tempo synthesized glitter. Hear that bitterness in the girls’ voices, especially when the men’s voices weave weakly in and out, ineffectually protesting. Those strident female vocals never worked better than in this song (well, this one and “Money, Money, Money”). Then there’s the tantalizing “a-ha’s” thrown in, not to mention the whispered echo of “memories…good days…bad days…”, like the devil on her other shoulder tempting her back into the relationship.
The lyrics casually drop details of this affair. Clearly it's been volatile – “this time we’re through” they keep saying, so you know they’ve broken up before. She’s “walking through an empty house / tears in my eyes,” so they’re been living together; “in these old familiar rooms / Children would play / Now there’s only emptiness / Nothing to say,” so there’s kids involved. I imagine a tough, independent woman (blond of course), pulling the plug on a marriage that’s put them both through the wringer -- hence the hardness of the music's electronic texture, the flat affect of the singing, the forced snappy rhythm. They're past fury, but not yet in acceptance mode; hear how the voices waver briefly on the line “Breaking up is never easy / I know / But I have to go,” with its plaintive echo of all those girl-group songs. It’s practically like a Bergman film in my opinion; those doubled vocals make me see Liv Ullman and Bibi Andersson in Persona.
Did you know that Frida and Agnetha’s vocals were recorded separately, at slightly different tempos? They were then adjusted for playback at the same tempo, which made one girl’s voice come out ever so slightly lower than the other. The result was a distinctive mix of dissonance and bottom, which invested those tracks with an anthemic grandeur. When I heard that (that airplane documentary again) it was like a bell going off – of course! It wasn’t just how great Frida and Agnetha’s voices were; this studio “sweetening” was a stroke of genius, especially given the disco-like shimmer of their wall of sound.
If this were a slow and mournful song, it wouldn’t work. It’s a hard and determined song. She is walking out, and calling on all the steel in her soul to do so. But she’s the level-headed one here, the one who knows her man and knows herself and knows there’s no hope. They’ve given it an honest shot, but it is TIME TO MOVE ON. Well, godspeed, sister. You go, girl.
Take a listen: http://www.amazon.com/gp/recsradio/radio/B00005CDNG/ref=pd_krex_dp_001_005/002-8741997-4930451?ie=UTF8&track=005&disc=001
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